Blending modes are a tool that takes pixels from one layer and combines them with another layer of pixels that makes a completely new effect. In order to achieve this photoshop combines both the base layer and a blend layer in order for this to take place. The original colour layer is the base layer these are then combined with the corresponding pixels on the blend layer, these are the colours that are the same or similar to on each layer. The of process combining the two corresponding pixel colours is called blend operation. Each of these blends are based on the saturation, luminosity and colour, photoshop has 27 of these. Each of these 27 blends are separated into 6 different sections.
When applying a normal blend mode to an image, there is no almost no change to an image apart from when the opacity of an image is changed using the opacity slider.
When you apply a darken blend mode to a layer, the resulting image will be darken than the original image and you will see parts of both images.
When applying the lighten blend mode to a layer, the result image is lighter than the original image.
When you apply a contrast blend mode to a layer, the pixels that are 50 percent grey become transparent. When a pixel is darker than 50 percent grey, it will be darkened. The opposite will happen if the pixel is lighter than 50 percent grey they will be lightened.
When there is an inversion blend applied to a layer, it creates a variation between the base and blend colour as the result.
When there is a component blend mode applied to a layer, there will be different combinations of the primary colours red, blue and green, these colours are mixed to create the result. This blend mode uses all three of hue, luminosity and saturation.
